A year ago, Southern-rock icon Gregg Allman realized that he had put off dealing with his health — and his recording career — for too long.

It had been nearly seven years since he had been in the studio to record new music by his iconic Allman Brothers Band’s “Hittin’ the Note,” and 13 years since he had recorded his last solo album, “Searching for Simplicity.”

Perhaps the most difficult change, Allman says, was the 2002 death of Atlantic Record producer Tom Dowd, with whom both he and the Allman Brothers had some of their greatest successes.

Complicating things was a debilitating battle with hepatitis C, with which Allman was diagnosed in 2007. It had severely damaged Allman’s liver and left him chronically exhausted.

But on Tuesday, Allman released “Low Country Blues,” a collection of covers of blues songs from Muddy Waters, BB King and others.

And in June, Allman’s health issues also were addressed: He received a liver transplant.

Allman, 63, in a recent call from his Savannah, Ga., home before starting a short tour that Saturday brings him to Penn’s Peak near Jim Thorpe, talked about his new disc, his recovery from the transplant surgery and the possible future of The Allman Brothers.

Here’s a transcript of the call.

Lehigh Valley Music: “Low Country Blues” is your first solo disc in 13 years. What took so long?

Allman: “Oh, well, I had things going on with the brothers. You know, just life’s changes. Uh, 2002, everybody’s producer within the brothers’ whole camp, Tommy Dowd, passed away. And frankly, I, when the subject of recording would come up, I would just go hide somewhere, you know? You know, I wasn’t, to tell you the truth, my saddlebags were definitely not full of brand new songs.

“I went through – I was getting kind of sick — I had Hep [hepatitis] C. And well, just one thing after another, you know? And finally, it seemed like it was the perfect time, my manager says, ‘I want you to meet this guy.’ That would be T-Bone Burnett. So I was coming off of a Allman Brothers tour and were coming down from Detroit or Minneapolis, somewhere up there and coming back to Savannah, Ga., where I live. So he said, ‘I want you to stop by Memphis and check in there to The Peabody [Hotel] and I want you to meet this gentleman named T-Bone Burnett. I’d never heard the name before.”

Are you serious?

“Very serious. Writers and musicians have a way of crawling off into their own little hole, you know.”

So what was it that made your manager thing that this was the time for a record?

“Well, it’s kind of like a ‘move-it-or-lose-it’ kind of thing, I guess. Like maybe if you don’t hurry up and do a record, you’re going to forget how to do it, you know? [Laughs] I mean, that sounds very strange, but really he knew that deep down I wanted to. And of course, show me a musician that don’t want to get in the studio with some new stuff.” (Continues)

“Well, I have to admit T-Bone that day in Memphis, a whole lot of stuff came up. [Laughs] We just came up with the whole stuff – a lot of it just sitting there, a lot of it in days to come. Somebody’s already given him a big modem that was full, just full of thousands, I mean, literally, thousands of old, old obscure blues songs. Some of them obscure, some of them you’d know. Some of them you think you might have heard. And some of them, a lot of them were public domain.

“Anyway, when we were getting ready to part, he said, ‘Listen, I’m going to peel you off about 25 of these tunes and I want you to pick out about 15 that you’d kind of like to record. If you don’t find 15, I’ll send you some more. And so, he send them down to me and so I went over them for about five weeks, I guess, five, six weeks. I just carried them with me everywhere I went, listening to the old original versions and trying to picture or hear them done in my mind.

“He hadn’t sprung the [idea of] using his band. [Laughs] I hadn’t heard about that yet. I almost slammed the door on the whole thing when I heard that.”

Well, tell me a little about that. He just comes to you with the idea that, OK, this is the and we’re going to use and presents it to you like that?

“Uh, well, first off he came to me and said, ‘We’re going to cut this in Los Angeles.’ And I’ve done my time in Los Angeles – well, can’t say something nice. I can think of a hundred other places with a hundred different surroundings to record – I mean, you could go out in the desert, you can go on the beach, you can go all to kind of different places [Laughs] that would be better than hitting the traffic every morning trying to get to the studio. Anyhow, that’s neither here nor there – it’s the end result, right? [Laughs]”

Well, but I can understand where you’re coming from. If you’re going to do something, you want it to be enjoyable.

“Yeah, really. There are places in Hawaii to record, for God’s sakes.

“Any hay, I remembered that Tommy Dowd, when we first met him and he was asking us to come down to Miami to where they parked the old produced trucks at night – that where the studio is. And the criteria sound, that’s where his playpen was, right? I remember my brother said, ‘Man, that’s his sandbox, those are his toys, let’s go.’ And so it made sense. I was trying to make it to make sense here and it did.

“And then, he says, ‘By the way, we won’t need your band.”

[I laugh]

“What!? And I’m going, ‘Wait, wait just a f------ minute. Well, I’ll just stay here, too.’ And then I thought, and thought and thought about it. And I though. And they were rally standing on it, you know? And I thought, ‘Well, s---.’ And they were all ready to go, along with Rounder Records and it looked like they were just waiting just for me, and just with open arms, you know? And I thought, ‘Man, something’s got to be right about this thing. And something got me to say OK. I said, ‘Alright, when you want me there?’

“And then I just purposely, totally put that out of my mind, because I do not believe in carrying grudges. I do not believe in getting there with my ass over my shoulder or a damned thing. And so I just went there with a clear, fresh head. Thank god that I don’t do any kind of drugs anymore or liquor. Thank God. ‘Cause if I’d have had a few beers [laughs], I’d have said, ‘Now I see, you sons of bitches. If I’d had brought my band, everything else would have been cool!’ First mistake, right? [Laughs heartily].

“I’m 16 years sober, thank you very much. Clean and sober.”

Congratulations, congratulations.

“So I got down there. Now I didn’t know who was going to be in the band. I was kind so taken aback by them not wanting my band at all, I hadn’t stopped to think, ‘Well, I wonder who’s in their band?’ I really hadn’t. And I got there and there’s Mac Rebennack [Dr. John] sitting there, all like, [affects an accent] ‘Hey, bro? What’s happening?’ I knew him from him playing on my second solo record.’

He’s got a show coming up here in a couple months [March 3 at Sellersville Theater 1894].

“Oh yeah? Go see it, man, he’s …”

I will – he’s going to be in the Rock and Roll hall of Fame now.

“Oh yeah, he just got in. S---, he belonged in there long before me.”

Well, I don’t know about before you. But he belonged in there, that’s for sure.

“Well, he damned sure did. [Laughs]” Who else got in?

Oh, uh, Neil Diamond, Alice Cooper. Gosh, I forget the rest.

“Anyhow, and Dennis Crouch played bass, and Jay Bellerose played drums. And, man, it was just incredible. It was incredible. The first song we did was [Sleepy John Estes] ‘Floating Bridge,’ and it was just bing-bada-boom, we had it. [Laughs] I mean, it got off to a ROARING start.

“And with that, I think that first day, we got two and the beginnings of another one.”

Wow.

“Oh man, we knocked them out. Let me tell you – we cut 15 tracks in 11 days. Yes, sir. And hell, I planned on being there at least three weeks. I mean, at the absolute least. And I wasn’t even there two.”

I read that a lot of the vocals were actually first takes.

“Yeah, we had a few. They really scare me, man, you know. I don’t think I’ve ever had but maybe two of those in my whole career, and here I got bam, bam, bam. [Laughs]”

So tell me just a little bit about “Just Another Rider,” the new song. How did that come around? Is that something that you had, or did you work it up?

“No, me and [Allman Brothers Band guitarist] Warren Haynes, we finished that about – now let me see, it was already cold, that’s for sure. I was doing this benefit for Michael J. Fox ['A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Cure Parkinson's' at The Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City on Nov. 21, 2009] and Elvis Costello was there and a bunch of different people. Michael J.’s a great dude, man, by the way.

“I remember that that afternoon of the show, Warren – who lives right up the Hudson – he came down and we finished it right there on the spot. And I think the only thing we had left to do was the bridge, and sure enough we finished it right there. So it was kind of early fall and then it wasn’t too long after that that I took off and went to LA to record.”

Let me ask you a little bit – you mentioned your Hepatitis C. You’re a recent transplant recipient. How are you feeling these days?

“Uh, I’m still healing and I’m about to the six-month mark. I asked them before, I said, ‘When is gonna feel like nothing ever happened.’ They said, well, hopefully it would be a year, probably a little more. By a year and a half you should be fine.”

Have you already been out touring since?

“Yeah, I went out with T Bone on the Speaking Clock Revue. We had the common band and Elton John, Leon Russell, myself, Elvis Costello and Neko – the girl who used to sing with the Velvet Underground. In fact, she sang ‘Midnight Rider’ with me. And did an incredible job. And please print that part.”

Cool.

“There was a bunch of other acts there, but we all used the same band. And for the first time I got to see T Bone’s whole band. And I mean to tell you – he had four horn players that were all wind instruments, there was no reeds. He had a tuba, he had a couple bones – trombone -- trumpets.”

Before you got the transplant – was your hepatitis really affecting you? What was the effects of it.

“You didn’t have any energy, you know? I mean that good old charging-from-the-gate energy. You just couldn’t get any energy. I mean, it’s kind of like that now but it’s healing up. It takes a while to get in with your body. And they give you this stuff that you’ll be taking for the rest of your life. It’s called Prograf and it’s anti-rejection drug so your body won’t reject the new organ.”

‘Cause I got to tell you – I saw you at Penn’s Peak last year, just about a year ago, and you guys put on a very good concert. I couldn’t tell there were any effects on you then. You performed very well.

“That’s ‘cause I’d been sleeping all day, probably [Laughs]”

Now that you put out a solo album, is there any Allman Brothers stuff in the works? Or is it even a thought?

“Oh yeah, it’s a thought. It’s definitely a thought.”

Any further than that?

“Well, yeah, yeah. There’s some songs actually floating around. Quite a few of them, as a matter of fact. Anyhow, this is just a thought – I can’t say as the other guys and the brothers know about this, but I had given it the thought to try to hook up the Allman Brothers with T Bone.”

Wow, that would be great. You know, you still surprise me that you didn’t know him. He toured with Bob Dylan in the Rolling Thunder Revue tour. He was one of my favorites, so I thought it was a great idea, him hooking up with you guys.

“Well, I don’t know. It’s a lots of music. Lots of bands. I’m sort of sure. [Laughs] I’ll probably get turned down. But it’s a worth a try. I haven’t … God, I guess you’re the only one I’ve talked to about it. [Laughs].”

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JOHN J. MOSER has been around long enough to have seen the original Ramones in a small club in New Jersey, U2 from the fourth row of a theater and Bob Dylan's born-again tours. But he also has the number for All-American Rejects' Nick Wheeler on his cell phone, wrote the first story ever done on Jack's Mannequin and hung out in Wiz Khalifa's hotel room.

OTHER CONTRIBUTORS

JODI DUCKETT: As The Morning Call's assistant features editor responsible for entertainment, she spends a lot of time surveying the music landscape and sizing up the Valley's festivals and club scene. She's no expert, but enjoys it all — especially artists who resonated in her younger years, such as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Tracy Chapman, Santana and Joni Mitchell.

KATHY LAUER-WILLIAMS enjoys all types of music, from roots rock and folk to classical and opera. Music has been a constant backdrop to her life since she first sat on the steps listening to her mother’s Broadway LPs when she was 2. Since becoming a mother herself, she has become well-versed on the growing genre of kindie rock and, with her son in tow, can boast she has seen a majority of the current kid’s performers from Dan Zanes to They Might Be Giants.

STEPHANIE SIGAFOOS: A Jersey native raised in Northeast PA, she was reared in a house littered with 8-tracks, 45s and cassette tapes of The Beatles, Elvis, Meatloaf and Billy Joel. She also grew up on the sounds of Reba McEntire, Garth Brooks and Tim McGraw and can be found traversing the countryside in search of the sounds of a steel guitar. A fan of today's 'new country,' she digs mainstream/country-pop crossovers like Lady Antebellum and Sugarland and other artists that illustrate the genre's diversity.